IDPA as a sport is quite simply the use of practical equipment including full charge service ammunition to solve simulated “real world” self-defense scenarios. Shooters competing in IDPA events are required to use practical handguns and holsters that are truly suitable for self-defense use. No “competition only” equipment is permitted in IDPA matches since the main goal is to test the skill and ability of an individual, not his equipment or gamesmanship.

The Chicago City Council with great reluctance in the last full week of June ended its long-standing prohibition and approved an ordinance intended to satisfy a federal court order to allow firearms retailers to open within the city limits. Mayor Rahm Emmanuel made certain that the regulations were written to be extensive, rigid and difficult to meet.

Among other requirements, stores would have to maintain a sales log of gun sales that duplicates existing federal requirements. Once open, retailers could sell one handgun a month to a buyer. Then, if the city revokes a store’s business license for violating the ordinance, it could not reopen at the same location for three years. The cost of that license was pegged at $3,800. We can easily envision a gauntlet of city inspectors awaiting a store owner seeking to open for business.

Of special concern is establishment of so-called “special-use zoning” that would seem to eliminate 99.5 percent of Chicago’s land area from ever seeing a store